The Miracle Stealer

by Neil Connelly

  Those of us circled behind Daniel—me and Bundower, my mother and Volpe and Mayor Wheeler—we all traded glances, hoping that somebody else knew for sure how to interpret what was happening. By the time I turned back to the Pilgrim congregation, a few were stepping forward from the crowd, and those behind them seemed to be falling in line. It was as if they’d choreographed this smooth movement, like they were suddenly flowing with one mind.

  The second Pilgrim to come before Daniel was a man wearing a blue suit and a loosened tie. His clothes looked expensive, but that didn’t keep him from dropping onto one knee in the dirt before my brother. He raked a hand through his thinning hair before he spoke. “When I was young, I cheated on my wife. A dumb thing on a weekend trip. I never told her I was unfaithful.”

  I’m not sure Daniel knew what “unfaithful” meant, but he understood “cheated” and knew that the man had done something wrong. He shrugged his small shoulders and said, “When you hurt somebody, you should say you’re sorry.”

  The man jerked his head side to side. “But I can’t. She passed away. Last November. Before that, I was close to telling her. I swear it. But then she started getting weak. Once she was diagnosed, once we knew she wouldn’t make it to the new year, how could I tell her? All the while she was wasting away in that bed, she kept patting my hand, telling me what a good man I was, telling me how I was her love forever.”

  Everyone in the fairy fort was silent. Even those watching along the rim above, the ones who’d followed us from the field, were still, and I wondered if they could hear what was being said at the rock. Daniel said, “Maybe she can she forgive you from heaven.”

  The man looked up, tears rimming his red eyes.

  Daniel said, “Your wife can still hear you. Maybe she’s even listening right now. You can still say you’re sorry.”

  The man didn’t smile, but he took a deep breath and staggered to his feet. Leo took his elbow and steadied him. “Lay down your guilt, brother. Bury it here in this place.” Together, they moved to the side and knelt before an upside-down tricycle with no front wheel.

  The third Pilgrim was a teenage girl just younger than me. She had jet-black hair and two lip rings, so for sure she wasn’t from Paradise. She giggled nervously and rocked back and forth in front of Daniel, knowing that everyone was staring at her. With a sudden movement, she rolled back one sleeve and offered a wrist thick with scars. Some of the scabs were fresh and raw. Daniel reached out and held her wrist tenderly, looking at the wounds. The girl forced a laugh and said, “I do it to myself. When my parents are asleep. In my bathroom so there’s no mess.”

  “Don’t that hurt?” Daniel asked.

  She nodded. “That’s why I do it. But I want to stop. I really, really want to stop.”

  Daniel hugged her around her waist, pressing his face into her belly. “Please quit doing that.” When he stepped back, she wiped a finger under one eye, smearing black mascara across her cheek. Then she wandered off, drawing a steak knife from her back pocket and dropping it into the pile of sacred artifacts.

  “Thank you, merciful Christ!” Volpe shouted, and her cry was echoed by others, both in the fairy fort and, strangely, along the rim above. Still next to the man in the suit, Leo grinned at me.

  The procession of afflicted circled around the fist-shaped rock. A thin lady with sunken cheeks and veins rising from her neck told Daniel she made herself throw up after she ate because she thought she looked fat. A father tightly gripped the hand of his toddler son, a sweetly smiling boy who couldn’t hear or speak. An olive-skinned woman pressed her hands together in prayer and said with a thick accent, “Uncle stomach very sick.” A lady wearing glasses on a chain offered Daniel her crooked fingers, plagued for years by arthritis. Clutching a worn Bible to his chest, a trucker said he’d run over a man in a gas station in Virginia fifteen years ago. Rather than stopping to get help, he sped off in a panic. When he finished his confession, he joined the adulterous man, who was still on his knees.

  Not everybody in the line was a total stranger. At one point Jeff’s father stepped up and, without saying a word, emptied the liquor from his monogrammed silver flask. He tossed it onto the pile and it clattered up against a Ouija board. Jim and Sally Guth appeared as well. Lifting Daniel’s hand to her belly, she asked, “Can you feel that life?”

  Jim raised his eyebrows. “Right now, our baby is half the size of a sweet pea. That’s what the doc said. Thank you.”

  After waiting patiently, each Pilgrim came forward. I’d guess about half made a request for relief from physical suffering, either for themselves or a loved one. The other half confessed some secret sin and sought penance or outright absolution. Some wanted to give Daniel a letter or a tiny gift. One lowered a necklace over Daniel’s head, then centered its gold cross on his chest. As the cured and the penitent moved away, most wept, a few laughed. Three or four fainted and had to be carried off by Leo and a couple of the Pilgrims that I recognized from the white robe choir.

  All the while I kept a close eye on Daniel, looking for trembling or sweat, any sign of physical strain. But he seemed fine, better than fine, even. My brother seemed energized.

  I watched all this the same way you observe a dream in your deepest sleep. None of it seemed quite real. I found myself focusing on the Pilgrims’ faces, trying to read their needs. Leo had suggested that they’d all come because they believed they needed some kind of healing. But up close, I saw something else mixed in with all that brightness and hope: desperation. And it occurred to me that nobody believes in miracle cures until they’ve exhausted their other options.

  The strangest thing is that for just a second I swore I saw myself out there among the Pilgrims wrapping around the fist-shaped rock, waiting in line for an audience with Daniel. Maybe it was just somebody who looked a whole lot like me. Maybe it was a hallucination brought on by my jealousy, the wish I resented even as I felt it, that I too could feel the Pilgrims’ faith. Whatever the source of that vision, it got me wondering what I would say, what healing I would request from my brother if I were a true believer.

  “Where are they all coming from?” Bundower asked, snapping me from that fantasy.

  From our side, Leo answered the Chief by pointing up to the ridge, where, here and there, a festivalgoer was descending the slope into the fairy fort. People who’d driven to Paradise expecting nothing more than cotton candy and carnival games were coming forward to have the stains lifted from their souls. It was when I was looking at these folks, the ones watching from above, that I saw an out-of-towner holding a video camera in one hand, and even from a hundred feet away I could see the green light blinking. We were being filmed. It wasn’t hard to imagine the footage making its way onto the six o’clock news up at WPBE, and from there I wondered if the networks or the satellite news stations would pick up the story. I pictured Paradise overrun with pilgrims, and Daniel at the center.

  I was trying to think of a way to get my hands on the camera when the Abernathys stepped out from around the fist-shaped rock. Mr. Abernathy was cradling Miracle, wrapped snug in a pink blanket. Mrs. Abernathy walked beside him. Volpe and my mother rushed over to embrace their friend.

  “Grace,” my mother said. “You should have kept that baby at home.”

  “No,” Mrs. Abernathy said back, her eyes hazy and light, focused on Daniel. “Of all people, we had to come.”

  They approached Daniel and bent down so he could see Miracle. Her scrunched-up face was peaceful as she slept. He asked permission to give her a kiss. “I’ll be gentle,” he promised, and he leaned in.

  I guess that the Abernathys had gone mostly unrecognized among the Pilgrims, because close by, those waiting in line began to whisper:

  “That’s the child, the baby Daniel brought back to life.”

  “She wasn’t breathing for two hours.”

  “The girl is a sign sent by God.”

  These rumblings rolled quickly back through the congregation, which had been lulled
into a kind of slumber. Now they woke, anxious and agitated.

  “What’s happening at the rock?”

  “We can’t see!”

  “Wait your turn!”

  Just like that, as fast as an August thunderstorm can overtake a blue sky, the orderly procession broke down and the people began to surge forward. Those already healed and those still waiting bumped up against one another, straining to get a look at the miracle baby. Bundower stepped between the Abernathys and the crowd, spread his arms wide, and said, “Let’s maintain a safe perimeter. Give these good people some breathing room.”

  “Let us see the girl’s birthmark!” someone shouted.

  “Does Miracle really speak in tongues?”

  We retreated into the rock, stepping our way back through the remnants of broken lives. My mother pulled Daniel inside her arms and I stood in front of him.

  Leo raised his voice and said, “There’s no need for this. Daniel’s gift is for everyone.” Some of the Pilgrims who had been in the choir with Leo helped make a little wall around us, so the crowd couldn’t press in farther.

  But before long everyone seemed to be shouting, and all the racket woke up Miracle. She started wailing, a sound that rose and echoed around us, as if the forest itself were suddenly in pain. The Chief looked back at me and his face seemed a little concerned. But I wasn’t really worried. Until I saw Batman.

  Not Batman himself, but Batman pajamas. Black and gray fabric, a patch of yellow from his chest emblem. In the Pilgrim crowd, five feet from me, stood Scarecrow, and hanging around his neck like a scarf were Daniel’s bloodied Batman pajamas, the ones he wore the night of Miracle’s birth. My mother must’ve thrown them in the garbage.

  Unlike the rest of the pilgrims, he wasn’t pushing or shouting. He was perfectly still. Beneath sprawling wiry eyebrows, his stare narrowed on my brother.

  “Chief!” I yelled above the din. “Somebody over here you need to meet.”

  Bundower glanced over, followed my eyes, and saw what I saw. His hand swung quick along his hip, then stretched over his head, shoving his pistol high in the air. Even in the dull gray light, the metal gleamed. The Pilgrims froze, eyes wide in surprise and shock. The Chief didn’t fire his gun, and I wondered again if it was even loaded. “Okay then,” Bundower said without emotion. “Now that I have your undivided attention. You will all step away calmly.”

  The Pilgrims backed off without turning around, just a few feet really, enough to show the Chief they understood he meant business. But Scarecrow stood his ground, and as the crowd receded, he was left out in the open. I was the closest one to him.

  The Chief brought his pistol down and, holding it with both hands, he aimed it directly at the man. “Kneel down and lace your fingers behind your head. Now.”

  “Wait!” Leo shouted, and Pilgrims in the crowd backed farther away. A few people screamed.

  The Scarecrow didn’t take his eyes off Daniel, and even when I stepped in front of my brother, the man’s crooked gaze seemed to pierce my body. Not even glancing at the Chief, he said, “You cannot harm this body for it is a temple of truth. Your bullets are but smoke.” He reached up and stroked the pajamas the way a baby rubs a soft blanket for comfort. “I need to lay my hands on the boy, feel his flesh to be sure his heart is true.”

  “You need to get on your knees,” the Chief said.

  But the man ignored him.

  “Please,” Leo said to Bundower. “It’s clear he isn’t well.” He held up his open palms to the Scarecrow. “Gentle brother,” he said. “You believe the Lord has called you to this place?”

  Scarecrow scratched at his shoulder and shook his head, his eyes still fixed on Daniel. “I do not merely believe. I know. He speaks to me even now and I do His bidding without question. My soul is freed from doubt. The boy must be tested.”

  Over my shoulder, I heard Daniel sniffle. “Andi,” he said. “Something bad’s gonna happen.”

  Well, that was enough for me. I turned around and took his hand. Crouching behind him, her arms still locked around his body, my mother said, “Ann, what are you doing?”

  “I’m taking Daniel home. He ain’t safe here.”

  I expected her to disagree, but she relaxed her arms and I tugged my brother free. “C’mon, Little Man,” I said. “We’re out of here.”

  I had no plan, but I knew for sure that the Chief wouldn’t let Scarecrow follow us, and I didn’t even look back as I led Daniel out the way we came, away from the fist-shaped rock.

  Since the Pilgrims had crowded in close, there wasn’t really a clear path out of the fairy fort. They were crammed shoulder to shoulder, and I had to squeeze past. Some reached out to touch Daniel, maybe hoping to steal a quick blessing. He was sniffling hard, wiping his nose across his sleeve. “What about Mom?” he asked me.

  “She’ll be fine,” I said. “She’s with the Chief.”

  With most of the people still focused on the action around the rock, our retreat was going just fine until we reached the edge of the crowd. Up to that point, we’d only been seen by the Pilgrims we bumped past, and even with them, it didn’t seem to register that I was taking Daniel away. But when we began climbing the slope out of the fairy fort, we were in plain sight of everyone—all those watching from the rim above and all the Pilgrims gathered below. Over my shoulder, I glanced again at the fist-shaped rock, where Bundower stood next to Scarecrow, who was apparently now handcuffed with his arms behind his back. One squinting eye focused on me and he yelled, “That liar girl’s spiteful heart will bury his light!”

  Now a new truth seemed to dawn on the Pilgrims: I was stealing their savior. A few pointed at us and some began shouldering their way through the crowd, in pursuit.

  “Let’s go, Daniel,” I said, and we climbed, bending forward.

  When we neared the top of the ridge, there were already two or three Pilgrims at the bottom of the slope starting up. I told myself that once we reached the rim, we’d be safe among normal people, the ones who’d followed us away from the festival out of simple curiosity.

  But when we reached the level ground of the forest and stood up, a bearded man I didn’t even recognize blocked my path and said, “These people need Daniel.”

  The bearded man’s voice was deep with hurt and betrayal. Even worse, all around him I noticed festivalgoers, just ordinary folks who’d come in for a little carnival, giving me looks like I was the worst person in the world. Down in the fairy fort, some of the Pilgrims were wailing.

  “Don’t leave us!”

  “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  I looked at the bearded man and started to say something, but his mind was made up, and at that point, mine was too. So I just squeezed Daniel’s hand again and pulled him around the bearded guy, down the path, and toward the field. Daniel was in kind of a daze and didn’t say anything. I pretended not to hear the voices gathering behind us.

  My father taught me that if you ever come across a bear in the forest, the thing to do is walk away. Slow and calm. Nothing activates a bear’s attack sense more than seeing something running. Instinct takes over and it can’t help but pursue—that’s just in its blood.

  What I learned that day in the forest is that a mob is much like a bear. My first mistake was looking back. Daniel and I were in the clear, a good ways down the winding path of cut stumps, just entering the orchard of wild apple trees. But there was this tingle in the back of my neck, like something was right behind us. I glanced over my shoulder, but nobody was following us. A group had huddled around the bearded man. How many were Pilgrims and how many were just festivalgoers I couldn’t tell. But they weren’t moving, just watching us go. Even at a distance, I could see the anger in their faces, and I realized with a start that Daniel and I were completely alone in the forest. The Chief and Leo were as good as a million miles away.

  To tell you the truth, I don’t even remember making the decision to run. Maybe Jeff’s right and it’s my nature. But all at once my legs were in
motion and instead of just holding Daniel’s hand, I was yanking him hard by the wrist. Taking off, bolting like that, that was my second mistake. Because just like the bear, the mob couldn’t help but pursue.

  Somebody let loose with a good whooping yell and when I looked back again, it was like a dam had burst. People were flowing down the hill, along the trail and through the trees, charging after me and my brother.

  We had a good lead on them, plus we had fear on our side, and nothing makes you run faster. Daniel and I hopped over fallen logs and scooted around stumps and rocks and all the while I never let go of his hand. I didn’t risk looking back again, afraid I might fall, but soon enough I could hear their voices as they yelled:

  “In the name of Christ Jesus, stop!”

  “His gift is meant for us all!”

  “Bring him back to us!”

  At the time, I thought that was the most scared I could be. Before the night was over, I’d learn better.

  But right then I just ran, through the broken stone wall and then past the stage and into the field where Paradise Days was still going on. It seemed impossible to me that with everything happening at the fairy fort, people could still be buying funnel cake and playing horseshoes, but plenty were. Of course that all stopped as I came ripping through with a roaring gang of Pilgrims not far behind me. You might think that the Pilgrims would have been slowed down, but instead the other festivalgoers fell in and started running too, just to be sure they didn’t miss anything, I guess. So basically it felt like we were at the front end of a cattle stampede. The Pilgrims were gaining on us, and even though I wasn’t sure what they would do if they caught us, I thought it was best not to find out.

  I didn’t have the keys to Bundower’s car, and there was no safe place I could duck us into to hide. I’d been running blind. Just as this all came clear to me, the hot air balloon rose up before us, and I pictured Daniel and me climbing in and escaping into the sky. The wicker basket was on the ground, with just the guy running the ride. But I also saw the ropes, thick as power cables, binding the balloon to the ground. We’d be no better than the raccoons chased up a tree by Bundower and Pinkerton.